Fatema Mernissi, feminist writer and sociologist, Died at 75

  Writers

Fatema (or Fatima) Mernissi was born in 1960, and died on November 30, 2015.

He was a Moroccan feminist writer and sociologist.

Fatema was born into a middle-class family in Fes in 1940.

She received her primary education in a school established by the nationalist movement, and secondary level education in an all-girls school funded by the French protectorate.

In 1957, Fatema studied political science at the Sorbonne and at Brandeis University, where she earned her doctorate.

Fatema returned to work at the Mohammed V University and taught at the Faculté des Lettres between 1974 and 1981 on subjects such as methodology, family sociology and psychosociology.

She has become noted internationally, mainly as an Islamic feminist.

As an Islamic feminist, Mernissi is largely concerned with Islam and women’s roles in it, analyzing the historical development of Islamic thought and its modern manifestation.

Through a detailed investigation of the nature of the succession to Muhammad, she casts doubt on the validity of some of the hadith (sayings and traditions attributed to him), and therefore the subordination of women that she sees in Islam, but not necessarily in the Qur’an.

Fatema writes extensively about life within harems, gender, and public and private spheres.

She contributed the piece “The merchant’s daughter and the son of the sultan” to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women’s Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan.

As a sociologist Mernissi has done fieldwork mainly in Morocco.

On several occasions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Fatema conducted interviews in order to map prevailing attitudes to women and work.

Fatema has done sociological research for UNESCO and ILO as well as for the Moroccan authorities.

In the late 1970s and in the 1980s Mernissi contributed articles to periodicals and other publications on women in Morocco and women and Islam from a contemporary as well as from a historical perspective.

In 2003, Fatema was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award along with Susan Sontag.

Fatema is currently a lecturer at the Mohammed V University of Rabat and a research scholar at the University Institute for Scientific Research, in the same city.

Fatema passed away on 30 November 2015.